Thursday, October 20th, 2011

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette ran an interesting article noting that migration into Indiana had slowed from Illinois. Given the significant press on the troubles in surrounding states, the “Come on IN” campaign, etc. I decided to take a look for myself at Indiana’s migration trends for surrounding states. Here’s the chart:

Indiana migration has remained fairly stable with Ohio and Kentucky. It has seen an uptick in migration from Michigan, which isn’t a surprise at all given that state’s challenges over the last decade. But net in-migration from Illinois has plunged. It’s even below the trough of the last recession. I wouldn’t read too much into that since a lot of the cross border movers are intra-MSA migrants in northwest Indiana. But whatever the dynamics, clearly there isn’t a recent surge of people – note that this has nothing to do with business – across the border form Illinois into Indiana.

You should do one for individual metropolitan areas. I’d be curious to see if the Fort Wayne area has more of an Ohio pull as opposed to the other states. Same with South Bend and Michigan, Evansville and Kentucky, etc.

Southeast Indiana has been growing as a result of the Cincinnati MSA pushing out that direction. It’s simply people moving from the west side Suburb of Harrison, Ohio across an imaginary line into West Harrison, Indiana. It’s really not knew people moving into the region. It’s simply people moving to a the latest suburban development tract. They’ve also seen an increase in Indiana from The Ohio River Casino Boats driving some development. This may stop though as the State of Ohio has approved Casino’s and one is now being built in Downtown Cincinnati. In General though this has been a wash for the Region. I don’t see this as a rush to move into Indiana.

This is much the same relationship Northern Kentucky has with Ohio inside the Cincinnati MSA.

Aaron makes the point that much of this is MSA related. Certainly in the Chicago MSA and maybe at the other end in the Cincinnati MSA. People seem to be slipping into Indiana around the margins, but the number placing their future in Indiana fully, ie. moving to Indianapolis from other Midwest states, seems quite modest.

I would tend to agree with Jeff: some of that Illinois migration may have been downstate. Toyota in Princeton is just a few miles from the border; Indiana may have required the hiring of residents from certain counties as a condition of its incentives. (State government did so in the case of Honda in Greensburg.)

It might be that many “new Indiana residents” otherwise are those in suburban greenfields outside Cincinnati, Louisville, and Chicago.

But if I recall correctly, intra-state migration in Indiana has almost every county in the state “losing” to Indianapolis. Some “internal” Indiana migration might properly be characterized as migration from those other metros. This could account for the modest Indianapolis gains from other states.

George, Indiana has a lower unemployment rate than all the surrounding states. Several major manufacturers are capital-equipment and export oriented, and others are auto related and have bounced back since the recession’s worst days. Indianapolis has successful life-sciences and e-marketing clusters. All that should be an attractor.

But I agree with you: so many people are underwater on houses that they stay put. With 10-20% cumulative price declines in non-bubble Midwestern cities over the past few years, even conservative young homebuyers are well below break-even (considering transaction costs of 3-5% to buy and 5-10% to sell). No one wants to take a check to closing when selling.

Perhaps an enterprising Telestrian user could look at the absolute flows from Cook County to Lake, Porter, LaPorte, and St. Joe counties in Indiana during 2002-09 to see how well they track the state-to-state trend.

Income levels of the migrants would also be important to know. If the “migrant average” is above either county’s median, it would suggest that the movement would represent move-up suburban relocation rather than CHA refugees.

I’m a bit skeptical, mainly because Indiana is a lower-benefit state (unemployment, welfare, Medicaid, etc.).

I believe Urbanophile did this recently and was surprised to see that Indiana was eporting higher wage workers to Illinois than it is importing. This makes sense as most of the CHA residents that lost their units have left IL. Indiana is cheap, good place to move to with a housing voucher.

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